Lost and Found
by lightsabermaster
Summary: Meet Charlie Johnston, "Cleaner" at Royal Hope Hospital. He’d read the job description, of course, and he was pretty darn sure it hadn’t said a word about cleaning up after aliens. Post “Smith and Jones”.


Lost and Found

By lightsabermaster

Summary: Meet Charlie Johnston, "cleaner" at Royal Hope Hospital. He'd read the job description, of course, and he was pretty darn sure it hadn't said a word about cleaning up after aliens. Post "Smith and Jones".

Revised 1/23/09. Many thanks to ladyisis-uk for correcting my oh-so-glaring Americanisms!

Rating: K+ for mild language.

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. It does, however, own me.

* * *

No matter what anyone said, there were jobs that were worse than being a nurse at a really big hospital. Oh, yes. You could be the one who had to _clean up after_ the nurses in a really big hospital. Charlie cursed his luck as he grabbed yet another discarded paper towel covered in God-knows-what from the floor and chucked it into the rubbish bag hanging from his cleaning cart. Of all the jobs he'd interviewed for, this had to be the only one that wanted him, didn't it? He knew he'd never had a chance for the position at the McDonald's (they only wanted teenagers with acne and nose rings), but you'd think that maybe, what with all the damage those robot-men almost a year ago and the sky star last Christmas had done, the construction people would jump at the chance to hire a big, strong guy. Well, they would; too bad Charlie was neither.

If only Grandad hadn't taken so ill all those years ago, Charlie thought, he could have gone to university. Become a computer programmer like he'd always wanted. Heck, he could be running the hospital's mainframe by now instead of emptying rubbish bins. But Grandad's treatment had taken all of the family's savings, and instead of a computer whiz, Charlie had become an ice cream vendor. He'd been very good at it, too, if he did say so himself. He could make the little twirl on the top of the cone like nobody else, and the kids loved to come into the shop after school because they knew that if nobody was looking, Charlie would put an extra twist of ice cream on their cones, free of charge. He'd been well on his way to becoming the Pied Piper of London when then the robot-men came and destroyed much of the city, including the ice cream shop. He'd tried to get a job at another one, but with so many people out of work, the positions were all filled. These days, nobody really wanted ice cream much anyway. They had more important things to think about, like aliens. So, he'd had to go out, practically begging, filling out applications to one business after another, only to get a job… here. Royal Pain-In-The-Rear Hospital.

Still, the job paid the bills, if just barely. He was almost finished putting the staff room back together; any other day he'd have sworn the nurses had thrown a wild party in there. There was coffee spilt on the floor, cupboard doors swung wide open, and paper towels and books were strewn all over. It must've been one heck of a bumpy ride, disappearing like that. He wasn't sure he believed the whole "went to the moon" thing (that was probably just the interior of an alien spaceship), but he did know that he'd gotten a call earlier that afternoon from Jackson telling him that the hospital had disappeared. He'd been rather grumpy at being awakened (who wouldn't?) and sleepily but colourfully accused Jackson of pranking. But Jackson had insisted, and sure enough, once he'd woken up enough to turn on the telly he'd seen that it was true. The hospital had disappeared. Poof, gone, big crater, goodbye. Charlie could still feel the lurch his stomach had taken when he saw. Not the_ oh-crap-I've-just-lost-my-job-but-woohoo-because-it-sucked-anyway_ kind of lurch either (though he'd had that too), but the_ I-wonder-if-everyone's-alright-and-what-the-heck-did-this_ kind of lurch. That's how he knew it had to be aliens; he'd been out of town on holiday when the Christmas star came, and watching the news on the telly had given him that exact same feeling.

He closed the last cupboard door, and after replacing the bag in the bin, he moved on. The wheel of his cleaning cart squeaked annoyingly as he turned the corner and headed for the first open door in the corridor. As he looked at the many scuff marks on the floors, he wondered if the reports of space rhinoceroses marching through the hospital were true. He tried to imagine what a space rhinoceros would look like. He'd heard that they stood upright and wore black armor, but try as he might, he just couldn't imagine it. And it was said that they _talked_. Talked, as in _spoke English_. How weird was that? Even if the people had been drugged like the news reports said, and they all hallucinated that they saw space rhinoceroses in space suits while in space, would anyone ever dream up the fact that such creatures would _speak English_? Even the monsters that made people go on the roofs two Christmases back hadn't spoken English. And if, for the sake of argument, the people inside the hospital had been drugged, what about the people outside? Why didn't they see space rhinoceroses on the moon? Nope, Charlie thought, it had really happened, it had to have.

And whatever they were, those rhinoceros-things sure had been messy. He sighed at his first glimpse into the scanner room. It was a complete mess, even worse than the staff room had been. Wires were strewn all over, the MRI scanner was looking decidedly burnt, and the shield window had a hole through it. A quick glance told Charlie that there wasn't much he could do to fix it up; leave that to the hideously-better-paid engineers that would surely be coming any day now. On the way out he did notice a bendy-straw on the floor, and he bent to grab it. He tossed it in his sack, but not before noticing the reddish residue clinging to the ridges. There was a theory for the news stations, he chuckled to himself; someone in the hospital had spiked the tomato juice.

()()()()()()()()()()()()()

It was late, really late. Charlie yawned as he bounced on his toes, waiting for the lift to take him down to the next level of disaster. Almost everyone official had cleared out by now; the police had taken down the tape, Torchwood had come and gone, and all but the Intensive Care staff had gone home. That left only the tired, red-eyed hospital maintenance workers to their drudgery. Charlie nodded and mumbled hello to the guys who brushed past him, carrying the empty oxygen canisters from the halls where they had provided oxygen for the most critical patients when the air was running out. He couldn't help but wonder what that must have felt like. To be sick or hurt and in hospital, with rhinoceroses in armor stomping through and the air almost gone… The lift's level indicator dinged, and when the doors rumbled open he wearily pushed his cart in and selected the level below. He glanced at his watch on the ride down: 4 o'clock in the morning. On a normal night he would have finished at least three floors by now. Oh well. Another ding, and the doors slid open to another level filled with scuff marks and opened cupboards and spilled coffee.

Despite Charlie's dire predictions, most of the level didn't require any maintenance he hadn't already done tonight; put cupboards back together, wipe up spills, empty bins. In fact, on the whole, this level was actually in better shape than the last one had been. He was pushing his cart down the last corridor when he noticed something odd. Of course, on tonight of all nights, odd was to be expected. At any rate, this was _odder than usual_, but that would imply that there had been a normal… Anyway, for the most part, the hospital had been relatively undamaged. Surprising with space rhinos running through the corridors, certainly, but a blessing just the same. And here, in the midst of all this un-broken-ness, was a door, lying on the floor in the X-ray room. Not even the heavily damaged MRI room had had a broken door. He knelt to inspect the hinges and noted that something had snapped them apart cleanly. He shuddered, not even wanting to think about the kind of power that would take. Something important must have been in here for someone to just break the door like that.

The gentle hum of the distant floor cleaner machine reached his ears as he stood and gingerly stepped over the flattened door. On the way to the control room, he noted that the X-ray machine looked pretty well burnt out, almost like it had exploded or shorted. The hospital would surely have to replace it. Thinking back to the MRI room earlier, he couldn't help but wonder if the X-ray and MRI machine malfunctions were related. Perhaps the space rhinos had needed radiation and magnets to fuel their ships or something? He quickly closed the cupboards and straightened the books on the shelf, replacing the book that lay open on the controls, and went to empty the bin. He started to gather up the bag, but stopped short. Now that wasn't something he saw every day; in the bin was a pair of trainers. Bright red trainers. _Barely worn_ bright red trainers. Who in the world threw away brand new trainers?

In the end, his curiosity got the better of him and he reached in to touch them. He stopped short when his fingers began to tingle. When he pulled his hand back, the tingling stopped, and if he pushed his hand forward again, the electric tingling danced across and pushed against his hand, making it feel asleep and like pins and needles in an itchy sort of way. That couldn't be good. He jerked his hand away and quickly tied up the bag and tossed it, hoping that he hadn't just done something incredibly stupid. After all, they could be Extraterrestrial Exploding Irradiated Trainers of Doom or something like that. He snorted and shook his head, amused by his own strange thoughts. Still, he wouldn't put something like that past aliens who could abduct an entire hospital.

He turned back to give the room a final glance-over to make sure he hadn't missed anything, when a burnt piece of metal in the corner of the room caught his eye. It was probably a piece that had blown off the X-ray machine, he figured, but it certainly wasn't going to be fixable, so why not just toss it? As he lifted the piece of metal he was surprised at its weight; it was much heavier than it appeared. After the trainers, he wasn't sure if he should really bother with it, but once again his curiosity overrode his better sense and he began to study the thing. It was the size of a small torch, in fact, it probably was a torch, given the blue lens at the end. Or maybe it was a heavy-duty laser pointer or a radiation focuser or something. Made of metal, of course. There was a button on the side, but when he pressed it, all it did was give off a faint buzzing noise; not even the lens lit up. It wasn't really a surprising result, though, given the fact that the whole end was burnt black. Charlie shrugged and carried the torch back to his cart, where he tossed it in the bag with the other rubbish. It looked pretty cool for a burnt-out thing, he had to admit. He'd have to look for one of those. Maybe they had them in the shop downstairs?

Charlie yawned again and looked at his watch. It was almost time for the day shift to arrive and take over, thank God. All he wanted to do was go home, get a shower, fall into bed, and NOT dream about rhinoceroses from space traipsing through the corridors of the hospital. He parked his cart in the cleaner's cupboard and went to scan his card to signal the end of his shift. On his way out, he looked up at the fading moon and realized that though he was grateful that he hadn't been there, if he was really, really honest with himself, the whole thing sounded kind of… exciting. It would probably be fun in a really scary way to be on the moon, faced by aliens, and live to tell about it. After all, his only contact with aliens had been to lose his job to them and to clean up after them. He wanted to face them, touch them, look them in the eye to see what kind of creatures they really were. Then maybe give them a good slapping, because if there was anything worse than cleaning up after the nurses in a really big hospital, it was cleaning up after _aliens_ in a really big hospital.

The End


End file.
